. >> she later moved over to the pentagon for the obama administration. she says they advocated a policy of trying to contain al-qaeda in north africa, instead of building up the abilities of regional governments to fight them. she says there's no guarantee mukhtar will confine himself to north africa. >> france is definitely a country where he would carry out terrorist attacks. he will also carry out attacks against americans in american installations in africa. >> similar perhaps to osama bin laden. when the 1990s began, he was in saudi arabia. in 1992, he crossed into africa and escaped an assassination in sudan. in 1996, bin laden took a chartered flight to afghanistan. in 1998, president clinton ordered a missile strike on bin laden and missed, but crews say they missed other opportunities to get bin laden. whether the miss on mukhtar ever comes close to the miss on bin laden remains to be seen. chris lawrence, cnn, the pentagon. >> still to come, the child who was held hostage in an underground bunker celebrated his birthday today. what we now know